Surfer 13 New Features Series Wrap-up

I hope you've enjoyed a closer look at some of the great new featuresSurfer 13 has to offer! To conclude the Surfer 13 new feature series, I want to mention just a few more new features that can help improve your workflows and increase your productivity!

New Welcome Dialog

The new Welcome to Surfer dialog (pictured above) puts frequently used commands at your fingertips. You can open sample files or recent files, open a new project or worksheet, access the tutorial, and more from this dialog. Don't forget to read the tip to learn useful tricks for using Surfer!

Limit the Z Range While Gridding

Some gridding methods extrapolate beyond the range of data that is gridded, which can result in undesirable values in the grid. For example, you may see negative values in a grid file when all the original data was positive. Previously, we've recommended that you use one of the suggestions from this Knowledge Base article to remove the undesired values. Now, you have the option of limiting the Z range during the gridding process! In the image below, I've set the Z minimum to a custom value of 0, and I've set the Z maximum to the data maximum.

Limiting Z values while gridding in Surfer 13.

WMS Improvements

Surfer's mapping software includes several improvements regarding downloading online maps! A recent newsletter article discusses downloading grid files from online servers. Connectivity to WMS servers has been improved with support of SSL and proxy servers. You can also download images from servers that offer images in other coordinate systems. Additionally, the Download Online Maps dialog received a facelift with additional features, including dragging and dropping items in the Data Source list and adding top-level data source categories.

Create Image Maps with Hill Shading

Show relief on your image map with the click of a button! Just select the image layer, and check the Enable hill shading box on the General page of the Property Manager. Hill shading casts a shadow from a specified light source to imitate a 3D display on a 2D map. In the Property Manager, you can adjust the angle of the light source, how exaggerated the Z scale is, and how bright the light is overall. I used the Grid | Mosaic command to divide the sample file Golden.grd into two halves, and then I overlaid the two grid files as image layers on the same map. The image below shows the image map using the two grid files, where hill shading has been applied only to the image layer that makes up the top half. The top half has more of a 3D look to it, and the bottom half appears flat.

The difference between an image map with hill shading and without hill shading.

These are just a few of the new features you'll find in the Surfer mapping software! For a complete list, see the Surfer 13 help. To access the help, click the Help | Contents command. In the help, click the Contents tab and then navigate to Surfer 13 | Introduction | New Features. If you don't have Surfer 13, download the free demo version to try all the new features with data of your own or sample data included with the installation!

Do you have any questions about this post? Do you have an idea for a blog post or have a topic you'd like to see featured? Let me know! Leave a comment, or send an email to jennifer@goldensoftware.com.

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